We will explore the monuments and the historical period which marked the beginning of the Golden Age of the city, when, during the second half of the XIIIth century, Florence became one of the largest european towns.

It is the city that wrote on Bargello Palace’s walls, “The Earth, the Seas and all the world belong to Florence”; it is the city of the gold florin, the dollar of the Middle Ages; the city with 150 tower houses, the medieval skyscrapers; the city with 80 banking companies that made Florence into one of the most important financial centers of Christendom, in other words, the New York of the Middle Ages. But it was also a vast worksite, where wealth was transformed into beauty and magnificence.

At the end of the XIIIth century the most impressive monuments of Florence were begun: the Duomo, the Signoria Palace, the convents of Santa Croce and Santa Maria Novella, the new circle of city walls, among the largest ever seen in the italian peninsula.

An historical moment really unique, that saw the star of Dante and Giotto shining and that had started forging a new vision of the human being, leading the way to Humanism and Renaissance.